REAL PEOPLE, REAL ISSUES

6 posts categorized "Science"

June 29, 2011

TODAY'S HIGHLIGHTS Kabul hotel attacked by suicide bombersA squad of bombers and gunmen attacked a landmark hotel in the Afghan capital late Tuesday, exploding a vehicle at its gate and then entering the building. (By Pamela Constable)

D.C. seeks foothold in online gamblingD.C. officials are scrambling to launch an online casino in the city, which is the first jurisdiction in the United States to sanction Internet gambling. (By Michael Laris)

Matching Supreme Court justices The Supreme Court term that ended Monday appeared to make clear that Bush and Obama got what they hoped for when they nominated the justices who will shape the court’s future. ( by Robert Barnes , The Washington Post)

September 04, 2008

TORONTO (AP) — A chunk of ice shelf nearly the size of Manhattan has
broken away from Ellesmere Island in Canada's northern Arctic, another
dramatic indication of how warmer temperatures are changing the polar
frontier, scientists said Wednesday. Derek Mueller, an Arctic ice
shelf specialist at Trent University in Ontario, told The Associated
Press that the 4,500-year-old Markham Ice Shelf separated in early
August and the 19-square-mile shelf is now adrift in the Arctic Ocean. "The
Markham Ice Shelf was a big surprise because it suddenly disappeared.
We went under cloud for a bit during our research and when the weather
cleared up, all of a sudden there was no more ice shelf. It was a
shocking event that underscores the rapidity of changes taking place in
the Arctic," said Mueller. Mueller also said that two large
sections of ice detached from the Serson Ice Shelf, shrinking that ice
feature by 47 square miles — or 60 percent — and that the Ward Hunt Ice
Shelf has also continued to break up, losing an additional eight square
miles. Mueller reported last month that seven square miles of the 170-square-mile and 130-feet-thick Ward Hunt shelf had broken off. This
comes on the heels of unusual cracks in a northern Greenland glacier,
rapid melting of a southern Greenland glacier, and a near record loss
for Arctic sea ice this summer. And earlier this year a 160-square mile
chunk of an Antarctic ice shelf disintegrated. "Reduced sea ice
conditions and unusually high air temperatures have facilitated the ice
shelf losses this summer," said Luke Copland, director of the
Laboratory for Cryospheric Research at the University of Ottawa. "And
extensive new cracks across remaining parts of the largest remaining
ice shelf, the Ward Hunt, mean that it will continue to disintegrate in
the coming years." Formed by accumulating snow and freezing
meltwater, ice shelves are lard. Ellesmere
Island was once entirely ringed by a single enormous ice shelf that
broke up in the early 1900s. All that is left today are the four much
smaller shelves that together cover little more than 299 square miles. Martin
Jeffries of the U.S. National Science Foundation and University of
Alaska Fairbanks said in a statement Tuesday that the summer's ice
shelf loss is equivalent to over three times the area of Manhattan,
totaling 82 square miles — losses that have reduced Arctic Ocean ice
cover to its second-biggest retreat since satellite measurements began
30 years ago. "These changes are irreversible under the present
climate and indicate that the environmental conditions that have kept
these ice shelves in balance for thousands of years are no longer
present," said Mueller. SOURCE:MOBILENEWSNETWORK

May 14, 2008

The polar bear, whose summertime Arctic hunting grounds have been
greatly reduced by a warming climate, will be placed under the
protection of the Endangered Species Act, Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne announced on Wednesday. But the long-delayed decision to list the bear as a threatened
species may prove less of an impediment to oil and gas industries along
the Alaskan coast than many environmentalists had hoped. Mr. Kempthorne
also made it clear that it would be “wholly inappropriate” to use the
listing as a tool to reduce greenhouse gases, as environmentalists had
intended to do. While giving the bear a few new protections —
hunters may no longer import hides or other trophies from bears killed
in Canada, for instance — the Interior Department
added stipulations, seldom used under the act, that would allow oil and
gas exploration and development to proceed in areas where the bears
live, as long as the companies continue to comply with existing
restrictions under the Marine Mammal Protection Act.Mr.
Kempthorne said Wednesday in Washington that the decision was driven by
overwhelming scientific evidence that “sea ice is vital to polar bears’
survival,” and all available scientific models show that the rapid loss
of ice will continue. The bears use sea ice as a platform to hunt seals
and as a pathway to the Arctic coasts where they den. The models
reflect varying assumptions about how fast the concentration of
greenhouse gases in the atmosphere will increase. SOURCE: NYTIMES

January 30, 2008

Ecuadorean authorities are investigating the clubbing deaths of more
than 50 Galapagos Islands sea lions found in January with their skulls
cracked, a state prosecutor said Tuesday. The killings had to be committed by humans, said Jaime Estevez,
who called it the work of "the criminal mind of some people who enjoy
watching these animals suffer." Estevez said it will be hard to determine who killed the animals,
including 13 pups. There is no permanent guard at the site, La Pinta
island at the northern end of the archipelago 625 miles off Ecuador's
Pacific coast. There were no injuries other than strong blows to the head,
ruling out the possibility that the animals were killed for their
parts. The Galapagos Islands were declared a UNESCO World Heritage
Site in 1979 for their unique plant and animal life, including giant
tortoises, marine iguanas and blue-footed boobies. Charles Darwin's
observations of the islands' finches inspired his theory of evolution. Animals in the Galapagos, Ecuador's top tourist destination,
are usually not afraid of people and are known to approach tourists
there. Last year, UNESCO added the archipelago to its list of World
Heritage Sites in danger from environmental threats or overuse and is
monitoring Ecuador's efforts to protect the area from ruin. SOURCE OF THIS STORY

September 20, 2007

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Arctic sea ice melted to its lowest level ever this week, shattering a record set in 2005 and continuing a trend spurred by human-caused global warming, scientists said on Thursday. "It's the biggest drop from a previous record that we've ever had and it's really quite astounding," said Walt Meier, a research scientist at the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center in Colorado. Sea ice freezes and melts seasonally, but never has it ebbed to this small a patch, the data center said in a statement. Compared to 2005, the previous record-low year for Arctic sea ice, this year saw a decrease of more than 386,100 square miles. That is about the size of Texas and California combined, or nearly five times the size of the United Kingdom, the center said. It is more than double the drop between 2005 and 2002, the previous record-holding year."That's a dramatic change in one year," Meier said of this year's sea ice decrease. "Certainly we've been on a downward trend for the last 30 years or so, but this is really accelerating the trend."The minimum amount of ice occurred on Sunday and freezing has already begun in some places, according to satellite imagery used by the center. EARTH'S AIR CONDITIONER Melting sea ice, unlike the melting glaciers of Greenland and Antarctica, does not contribute to global sea level rise, much as an ice cube in a glass of water does not make the level of liquid rise when it melts. However, without the bright white of sea ice to reflect the sun's rays, the Earth loses what some climate scientists call its air conditioner. The less ice there is, the more dark water there is to absorb the warming solar radiation. This year's record was caused by a "perfect storm" of interacting factors, Meier said by telephone. These included a long-running high pressure system that kept skies cloudless over the Arctic, along with a circulation pattern that pushed ice out of the Arctic towards Greenland, instead of letting it circle around the Beaufort Sea north of Alaska as it usually does. Also, there was thinner ice to begin with, Meier said. While this particular year's ice minimum cannot be directly attributed to anthropogenic -- human-caused -- global climate change, the trend that brought it about can, he said."This year, the reason why (the ice) was so low was not because there's more anthropogenically generated carbon dioxide dumped in the last year, it's because of this high pressure ... but you can't really explain the overall trend without invoking anthropogenically global warming," Meier said. He also noted that the decrease in Arctic sea ice was forecast in models used by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which this year said with 90 percent probability that global warming exists and that human activities contribute to it. However, the sea ice is diminishing much faster than any of the models predicted, Meier said. SOURCE OF THIS STORY

April 25, 2007

WASHINGTON Apr 17, 2007 (AP)— As the world
warms, water — either too little or too much of it — is going to be the
major problem for the United States, scientists and military experts
said Monday. It will be a domestic problem, with states clashing over
controls of rivers, and a national security problem as water shortages
and floods worsen conflicts and terrorism elsewhere in the world, they
said. At home, especially in the Southwest, regions will need to find new
sources of drinking water, the Great Lakes will shrink, fish and other
species will be left high and dry, and coastal areas will on occasion
be inundated because of sea-level rises and souped-up storms, U.S.
scientists said.The scientists released a 67-page chapter on North American climate
effects, which is part of an international report on climate change
impact.Meanwhile, global-warming water problems will make poor, unstable
parts of the world the Middle East, Africa and South Asia even more
prone to wars, terrorism and the need for international intervention, a
panel of retired military leaders said in a separate report."Water at large is the central (global warming) problem for the
U.S.," Princeton University geosciences professor Michael Oppenheimer
said after a press conference featuring eight American scientists who
were lead authors of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's
climate-effects report. MORE ON THIS STORY

September 2012

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